As we move toward November and the opportunity to choose the same or new representatives, there is a simple means by which to determine for whom you should vote. We may not all agree on the government’s role, but all of us should agree it is not to suppress free speech or block open debate.
Related: Free Speech: They use our Desire for Liberty Against Us
Skip touched on this source article here, but I wanted to revisit it. It is a letter you can sign which stands in opposition to what I call Campus Culture and the Left’s template for America (which too many Republicans aid and abet). A worldview summed up nicely in this pull quote from the original piece.
“…discarded any pretense of intellectual diversity. They deny the legitimacy—and sometimes the humanity—of those who disagree with them. They have built a left-wing intellectual monoculture that increasingly persecutes conservatives and is now threatening liberals…”
They are serious about their project, and we’ve provided piles of examples on these pages. From Tara Reade (a Democrat) to JK Rowling, a leftist, to scores of others, all of them allies of the left, some with the ability to sway opinion leftward, have been smeared, harassed, and when possible, canceled for daring to question even one facet of the program.
No one is safe. We are all at risk. And the Democrat party is more than a willing mule for this worldview. Its limitations on free expression are a necessary part of sustaining their political goals.
And if you give them the power they will abuse it. Thinking you are one of them will not protect you. Your right to have any opinion not approved by the far left will disappear. What the laws they pass do not do the mob will.
It makes no difference if you agree with none, some, or all of their social and political engineering you must reject them in large numbers at the ballot box or you may not have the opportunity to do it any other way. Ever again. Indifference is not an option.
Hate speech is nothing more than a tool to silence dissent. Hate crimes are the abuse of law to enforce speech suppression and to institute viewpoint discrimination. They have already openly advocated compelled speech and mob intolerance in defense of it.
This is not something from which we will easily if ever come back, and that is why we have been so fervent (at Granitegrok) in our opposition to the idea of Hate speech laws and Diversity commissions. They are constructs of the Campus Culture deployed by Leftists and embraced by Republican rubes. They exist to define and enforce a very specific form of discrimination.
Democrats in New Hampshire have already proposed legislation that targets you for speech they decide is abusive or threatening but does not limit them in any similar way. When they have enough votes to override a veto or a Democrat Governor that bill becomes law.
It’s Campus Culture, Campus Speech, the “left-wing intellectual monoculture that increasingly persecutes conservatives and is now threatening liberals…”. And it’s not just local Democrats.
Wear the wrong shirt or hat, say the wrong thing, eat or make the wrong food, tell the wrong joke, or dress in the wrong costume and you are a target of their hate.
In my written testimony opposing the NH Bill, HB1159, I quoted Noah Rothaman, who explained this authoritarian tick as criminalizing “..the forms of expression [they] find distasteful. [Because] freedom of expression is a threat to the public good.”
A problem for the Left if, in fact, they are not the ones in power. A point I framed like this: “If you would not want this power in the hands of President Trump, then you had damn well not, under any circumstance, give it to yourselves.”
But they are convinced they will be in power. Their reaction to Trump’s 2016 win is just a sample of what that failure looks like. It will be worse in 2020 if they lose but not as worse as what America becomes if the win. A point worth noting when dealing with Republicans who are supporting Joe Biden.
The campus template has gone wide. They are not shy about their goals, and if you do nothing you can kiss free speech goodbye.